More Glow Colors in PowerPoint 2013

Learn how to change the Glow effect's color applied to shapes in PowerPoint 2013.

Author:Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 2013OS: Windows 7 and 8

Date Created:
November 29th 2013Last Updated:
November 29th 2013

A
Glow effect
adds a hazed color perimeter outside the shape area -- and by default, the Glow colors emanate from
the active Theme. These default Glow colors works
most of time but of course, you can change the Glow color to something entirely different. In this
tutorial, you'll learn how you can change this Glow color to any color you want, as shown within the
sample Glow effects you see in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Change the Glow effect color

Follow these steps to change the Glow effect color:

Select the shape
so that the Ribbon area shows the Drawing Tools Format tab,
as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2.
Activate this Ribbon tab by clicking on it. Within the
Drawing Tools Format tab, click the Shape Effects button
(highlighted in blue within Figure 2).

Note: The Drawing Tools Format tab is a
contextual tab. These tabs are special tabs in the
Ribbon that
are not visible all the time -- they only make an appearance when you are
working with a particular slide object which can be edited using special options.

This brings up the Shape Effects drop-down gallery as
you can see in Figure 3. Within the Shape Effects
drop-down gallery choose Glow, and then choose More Glow Colors
from the sub-gallery, as shown highlighted in red within
Figure 3.

Figure 3: More Glow Colors option within Glow sub-gallery

This brings up the Colors flyout menu
(refer to Figure 3). Here you can choose any color for the
glow using the following options:

Theme Colors: Here you can select any of the colors which
are from the active Theme of the presentation. You can also select any
of the 5 tints or shades for any Theme color. Learn more about
Themes here.

Standard Colors: Here you can choose from any of the ten standard colors
-- these ten standard colors are just choices of colors that PowerPoint believes to be widely
used. You don't have to limit yourself to either the Theme colors or Standard colors, as we will explore next, although it's a good design idea to use Theme colors as far as possible.

Recent Colors: Here you can find the colors most recently used. If you have
just launched PowerPoint and created a new presentation, the Recent Colors option
may be entirely absent since you haven't selected any color recently!

More Fill Colors: This option is to summon the Colors
dialog box as shown in Figure 4. This dialog box has two tabs:
Standard and Custom -- first select the Standard
tab (again, refer to Figure 4).

Figure 4: Standard tab within the Colors dialog box

The Standard tab offers 127 colors in a honeycomb style palette,
14 gray shades, black and white. You can even change the transparency value of the
selected color in the Transparency slider below. If you want more
color choices, then select the Custom tab of the same dialog box, as
shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Custom tab within the Colors dialog box

Within the Custom tab, you can chose any color from the spectrum and later
adjust the selected color's luminosity with the slider on the right. You can even enter specific
values of RGB and HSL to create a specific color -- all these combinations provide 16 million
color choices!

Again, you can even change the transparency value of the selected color in the
Transparency slider below.

Choose any color and click OK to apply it.

In Figure 6 you can see that the glow color of our previously
selected Rectangle shape (see Figure 2) has been changed from orange
to pink.

Have your ever used keyboard shortcuts and sequences in PowerPoint? Or are you a complete keyboard aficionado? Do you want to learn about some new shortcuts? Or do you want to know if your favorite keyboard shortcuts are documented?